I'm a geochemist. In the past ten years I've fixed mass spectrometers, blasted sapphires with a laser beam, explored for uranium in a nature reserve, and measured growth patterns in fish ears, and helped design the next generation of the world's most advanced ion probe. My main interest is in-situ mass spectrometry, but I have a soft spot in my heart for thermodynamics, drillers, and cosmochemistry.

So a cubic mm can hold 1000 grains of fine sand, or 1 grain
of course sand. Obviously grain size is
important.

There are 1x1018 cubic millimeters in a cubic km.

How many cubic km of sand, sandstone, etc we have Is a
tricky question. But if we say the
average thickness of all sand for the globe is 200m (a thin number in any
sedimentary basin, but most of the Earth is not a basin in the traditional
sense. The surface area of earth is 5x10
8 km2, so a 0.2 km layer gives 10 8 cubic km of sand.

This brings the total grain count to somewhere between 103
x 10 18 x 10 8 = 10 29 for the fine sand, and
a thousand times less than that, or 10 26 grains of the coarse sand. If you want to know how that compares to the
number of stars in the sky, ask an astronomer.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

In my meandering career from academia to government to private sector, and back into all the grey areas in between, I've been an author on a few journal articles, government reports, and other publications. Usually, these are collaborations between groups of separated people, not all of whom interact with every other member of the team. For example, in the academic literature, I have a total of 21 co-authors, of whom I have met 9. If we include government reports as well as papers, then I have 42 co-authors, of whom I have met 17. I find it interesting that this ratio is so similar between the two types of reporting (about 40%). So I was wondering: for those of you who read this blog and publish, is your ratio about the same?

Tuesday, May 07, 2013

Universities Australia
has launched a recent ad campaign decrying proposed funding cuts to
university research. This ad showcases the products of off-shore corporate giants which are
trying to destroy the Australian high tech industry.

The complicated scientific instrument pictured in the ad from 0:12 to
0:17 is something called a IMS-1280, manufactured by the American technology
amalgamation Ametek under the brand name of Cameca, a European tech company
which Ametek took over last decade. Ametek is perhaps the most aggressive corporate giant around in trying to leverage the recent high Australian dollar to
destroy the Australian technology industry.

Obviously, Australia
is only a mid-size country, and most instrumentation in Australian universities
is sourced from off-shore suppliers. But
many of these suppliers are good corporate citizens, who set up Australian
subsidiaries, employ Australian graduates, and work closely with Australian
agents, subcontractors, and scientists to sustain the high technology
industries that define advanced economies in the 21st century. Indeed, one of these companies, the Japanese
technology group JEOL, has an electron probe installed just across the hall
from where the picture in the ad was taken.

Ametek is not a good corporate citizens. Instead of collaborating with Australian
manufacturers, they hire foreign lawyers to block sales around the globe. While other companies reinvest in Australian
research they hire slick Morden-like spokespeople to belittle the achievements
of Australian academics. And instead of
helping Australian universities improve productivity and reduce costs through
co-developed hardware and software modifications, they lock their customers
into exorbitant service contracts, the proceeds of which allow them to underbid
Australian companies whose instruments are generally preferred by researchers all over
the world.

Every time one of the instruments pictured in this ad is
purchased instead of an Australian equivalent, Australian universities lose hundreds
of thousands dollars in direct payments from Australian companies and their
international customers. It also means that Australian companies cannot create jobs
for university graduates, such as those pictured in the first part of the ad.

The government is proposing cuts to university funding
because of a revenue shortfall. Revenue
is down because aggressive corporate tactics by companies like Ametek are
denying work to Australian companies, resulting in fewer hours worked, reduced
income for the employees, and reduced income tax payment to the
government. So the approach of
Universities Australia to showcase one of the most aggressive job-killers in
their ad asking for government money is incredibly callous to all Australian
trying to earn a living outside of the Ivory tower.

Thursday, May 02, 2013

Four years ago, I blogged about the cognitive disconnect
between the ecological perceptions of wearing wool and eating beef. However, I did not actually calculate out
exactly what the carbon footprint of a wool sock is. Here it goes:

According to Wikipedia’s wool bale article, a bale contains
about 60 fleeces, and weights 150 ± 50 kg.
This gives a fleece weight of about 2.5 kg.

This wool sock weighs about 100g, meaning that you can get
about 25 socks per fleece. A sheep
produces one fleece per year.

A ballpark estimate from the NSW department of primary
industries suggests that a medium sized (45 kg) adult sheep in warm weather
needs about 500g of dry feed per day to survive. If this feed is mostly cellulose, it will
metabolize to produce about 800g of CO2 per day, or 297 kg/ year.
Assuming 25 socks per year, that gives about 12 kg of respired CO2
per sock.

However, in addition to respiration, sheep also produce a
fair amount of methane, which is generally considered to be 25 times more
potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
This paper estimates a methane yield of about 20 grams / day/ sheep, or
about 7.3 kg of methane per year. Using
the 25 times multiplier, we get a CO2 equivalence for that methane
of about 180 kg / sheep/ year, which is a bit over half the direct respiration
emissions. Dividing by 25 socks/sheep
gives is a CO2 equivalent of 7.3 kg per sock (300 grams
methane). In total, our CO2
equivalent emissions from the sheep are about 19 kg of CO2 per wool
sock- 12 from respiration, and 7 from methane. This figure only includes the CO2
footprint for growing the wool. It does
not include additional emissions from shearing, transporting the wool, spinning
it into yard, and manufacturing the sock.
This is the same amount of CO2 released by burning about 8
liters of gasoline (which is enough to drive a mid-size car 100 km), or one sixth
the emissions of a top fuel drag race (with 2 cars in it). So a hackey sack game with more than three
pairs of new socks in it is worse for the atmosphere than this.

In contrast, a 50 gram synthetic sock (synthetics weigh less
than wool) probably has a carbon footprint of 10-25 grams*. It production is one THOUSAND times less
carbon intensive than a wool sock. So
the next time some green evangelists starts looking down their noses at your car or your plate, check out their feet.

* In both the case of the plastic sock and the wool sock,
the carbon in the sock itself is sequestered in the sock drawer for the
lifetime of the sock, and in a landfill for several decades afterwards. Unless you burn your old socks, which smells,
or recycle your used synthetic socks into drink bottles, which is disgusting.

Disclaimer:

All opinions, measurements, figures, and facts on this page are the personal opinions of Charles W. Magee, Jr, and do not represent the views of any of his employers: past, present, present-but-about-to-be-past, or future. None of the content herein has been subject to peer review, and should be treated with caution or derision. Any passing mention of OSHA code violations, criminal activities, unethical or unscientific behavior, or the clandestine Australian nuclear weapons program are fictions created to make rhetorical points, and do not represent the reality of my, or anyone else's, workplace. Do not attempt any scientific protocols described herein at home, with the exception of the chocolate chip cookie recipe. Do not apply the products of that protocol to individuals with heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure or cholesterol, egg, wheat, dairy, or chocolate allergies. Do not view this blog continuously for more than 45 minutes without stretching and taking other precautions to prevent computer-related chronic injury.
email labhampster@gmail.com, but replace hampster with the arctic rodent after which this blog is named.